US Denies Coalition Raid Hit Syrian Army Camp

Syria says coalition aircraft fired at the base - describing it as "flagrant aggression" - but the US says the reports are false.

The US has denied claims by Damascus that coalition warplanes bombed a Syrian army camp, killing three soldiers and wounding 13 others.

President Barack Obama's envoy to the American-led alliance targeting Islamic State militants dismissed the reports as "false". Brett McGurk said on Twitter there had been no coalition airstrikes anywhere within 35 miles of the camp.

"Reports of coalition involvement are false," he wrote. Syria's foreign ministry said coalition aircraft had fired nine missiles at the base in Deir al Zor province, condemning it as "flagrant aggression".

Three armoured vehicles, four military cars and a weapons cache and ammunition had been destroyed in the attack, according to the Damascus regime.

It would be the first known attack on the forces of  President Bashar al Assad since the coalition began its bombing campaign against Islamic State extremists last year. Damascus has sent letters to the UN to complain about the attack and urged it to take "immediate action and take the necessary measures to prevent a repeat" of the incident.

Earlier, a monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said four Syrian soldiers had been killed in a suspected airstrike by the US-led coalition in the province mostly held by Islamic State.

The US and its allies have regularly targeted Deir al Zor in eastern Syria, which links IS's de facto capital in Raqqa with territory controlled by the militants in Iraq, and its oilfields are a major source of revenue for the group. British warplanes have now joined airstrikes in Syria after MPs backed extending the UK's military operation from Iraq.

Russia has also been waging a bombing campaign in support of Mr Assad, which has hit some IS targets.

But Western powers say most of the raids have targeted other rebel groups, opposed to the regime